Roxbury Branch of Boston Public Library Renovation
Roxbury Branch of Boston Public Library Renovation - Photography by Anton Grassl and Randy Crandon
Roxbury Branch of Boston Public Library Renovation
Boston, Massachusetts
Architect
Utile Design
Overview
This 27,000 square foot renovation project includes a revitalized community room with state-of-the-art audiovisual technology, new lighting, and large windows overlooking a new entrance and plaza. In addition to housing a solid book collection, including a dedicated African American collection; the upgraded building will include new program space for a technology teaching lab, nutrition lab with kitchen, and a number of computer stations.
Our Role
Studio NYL served as facade consultant.
Approach
A primary goal of the renovation of this existing Boston Public Library branch was to create a building that opens up a warm, inviting interior to the community. As with all reclad projects we are looking to breathe new life into a building while improving the performance of the building. A key component to achieving this goal was a wood veneer curtain wall. We worked closely with the architect, energy modeler, and construction teams to develop this striking wall system. The wall provides more warmth than your standard aluminum curtain wall by using a veneer curtain wall system with engineered wood mullions. These wood mullions not only provide a sense of warmth on the interior, but they also serve as the structure of the curtain wall, which is also significantly more energy-efficient than the existing envelope. A particular challenge was the preservation of the historic exposed concrete structure. As the opaque portions of the project would not be able to make use of continuous outboard insulation, the glazing transitions from vision to opaque required analysis using both THERM and WUFI to tune the detailing to provide better thermal transitions and manage condensation risk.
